CREATIONS BY FLOREA
Creations by florea
Shel is a writer, healer, and entrepreneur of Black and Chinese descent. Their first compilation of poetry, Stellium Poetry earnestly depicts their journey of self-discovery and spiritual growth. Shel is also the founder of Creations by Florea, an empowering online shop that is decolonizing traditional medicinal practices to promote autonomy over our health and bodies.
SHEER: Tell us a little bit about yourself and where you're from.
SHEL: I grew up in San Diego and moved to D.C for college, where I’ve been since. Before I had language to describe myself as an artist, healer, or even entrepreneur, I knew I was a creative. I grew up as an only child who spent a lot of time by herself creating magical worlds, narratives and paintings. I spent a lot of time in nature, photographing flowers and eventually myself, and so I have a deep love for trees on both of the coasts that I call home. I would say time spent with myself and never running out of creative ideas are elements of my childhood that are still present in my adult life.
SHEER: How would you say your cultural background and upbringing influence your poetry?
SHEL: Being biracial was something I understood on a very surface level when I was growing up, but didn’t understand the implications of what that meant socially and internally until I went off to college. I started writing Stellium, my first full-length poetry compilation, in the summer of 2016 right after I finished my freshman year. Much of the poems deal with themes like heartbreak and finding renewed self-love through spirituality, but the earliest poems discuss navigating the world as a woman and the magic that is available to Black women. I’m of African-American and Chinese descent, and my experiences as a biracial Woman of Color have definitely influenced my spirituality, which I would say is the core theme of Stellium. I have poems that reference Oya, revered Orisha of radical change and shaking old foundations, and the dark feminine energy that allows us to destroy and rebirth aspects of our lives as we strive for alignment. People associate spirituality with the New Age movement, which is largely white centered and often inappropriately “borrows” or steals from African and Asian traditions, and so people have very distorted views of what self-healing and the human experience are. The dark feminine is a symbol for shadow work and the not-so-fun part about discovering Self, and by studying the traditions of my ancestors from the African and Asian continents, I’ve realized that there are many cherished deities and energies who embody this energy. And as a descendant of colonized people, I believe that our lineage has a close relationship to those shadow energies from which abuse, control, manipulation and oppression are birthed.
So it’s impossible for me to separate my experiences as a self-aware Woman of Color from my poetic lens. The two are constantly informing each other, and for that I’m deeply grateful for multiple streams of insight.
SHEER: What inspired Stellium Poetry and how did it feel to publish your first body of work?
SHEL: Publishing Stellium was a huge moment for me! When I started writing the first poems in 2016, I realized it could become something more concrete if I fed and nourished the project over time. By 2018, I was writing poems specifically so they could go in the compilation and I was starting to focus on completing it. The last poems were written in 2019, so this is a project that spans my life over the course of 3-4 years. They’re stories of remembering Self, heartbreak, and having deeper insight and appreciation for lessons that presented themselves as hardships. Who I was at the age of 17 is very much present in the pages of Stellium, and I talk about how my past and future selves are always connected to who I am today. Learning how to have compassion for who I used to be, as well as feeling comfortable asking my future self for guidance as I make tough decisions or undergo transitions, is what my journey writing Stellium was all about. It took me a while to finish the book, like officially finish it, because I think I was afraid of closing that chapter in my life. But the timing was just right and once I made the decision to publish it, I think I grew up a little more.
I’m in the process of writing another book that will likely have more, longer essays and narrative pieces. I still look at Stellium with so much love and pride, because it was the longest and most substantial project I ever finished. It means the world to me and to have it immortalized is so special.
“People associate spirituality with the New Age movement, which is largely white centered and often inappropriately “borrows” or steals from African and Asian traditions, and so people have very distorted views of what self-healing and the human experience are.
The dark feminine is a symbol for shadow work and the not-so-fun part about discovering Self, and by studying the traditions of my ancestors from the African and Asian continents, I’ve realized that there are many cherished deities and energies who embody this energy. And as a descendant of colonized people, I believe that our lineage has a close relationship to those shadow energies from which abuse, control, manipulation and oppression are birthed.”
SHEER: Tell us a little more about Creations by Florea and what launching it was like.
SHEL: Creations by Florea is my online shop that stocks plant medicines like teas, smoke blends, facial serums, flower essences and ritual oils. I launched the shop in 2017 from my dorm room, and at the time, the only product I stocked was my facial serum. That was my first recipe and to this day it’s still one I’m super proud of, because it was birthed from pure experimentation and letting my intuition guide me. I was a college student for the first two years of CBF. Running a shop while being a full-time student with a part-time job was a lot to handle, but I also thrived off of the creative rush. Taking branding photos and making the oils was something I looked forward to after classes. Shop maintenance just fit so seamlessly into my life, it always has. It’s never been a burden and the ways that I’m able to flow alongside the shop’s growth remind me that this is something that’s meant to be in my life. There’s ease, rarely any stress, and always an abundance of gratitude and inspiration.
The shop has undergone lots of revisions. Right now, I’m in the middle of a rebrand with a freelance company called Creative Celestials. They’re doing an amazing job of reframing the brand’s story, so keep an eye out for the updated website this Summer!
SHEER: How is Creations by Florea empowering POC to declare more autonomy over their bodies?
SHEL: When I was in my final semester of college, I centered my research capstone on the use of herbal medicines among Black folks in the D.C area. I conducted a series of interviews with Black herbalists to learn about their relationship to plants through family, spirituality and community. The Black herbalists I spoke to had connections to local apothecaries, in-person stores that stocked herbs in bulk and served the community’s health needs in an interpersonal way. Long-term relationships between customers and herbalists eventually develop, because the herbalists function as medicine people for the community. In this way, folks who choose to use plant as either their primary or complementary medication are claiming autonomy over their health. Many People of Color are weary of the biomedical world because of a history of abuse. They’re fearful of hospitals, doctors, and strange medications. Or, on the other hand, they have medical conditions that require dependency on these systems. Plant medicine is an excellent way for people, and specifically folks of Color, to have more autonomy in how they heal themselves. They get to decide which plants make them feel good, which ones they connect with, and in the process can even learn about their ancestor’s relationships to the plants they’re using. My research really illuminated the fact that most people just want to feel like they can personally affect change on their lives. They want to know they can do something to make them feel better, and ideally develop healthy habits to ensure long-term health.
Creations by Florea products take a creative spin on traditional medicines like teas and tinctures. The medicinal properties are of course physical, but I would say that people are far more receptive to the energetic healing that the medicines offer. My ritual oils center Heart and womb healing, and can be used in everyday moisture routines as well as more sacred, occasional rituals. They’re an excellent way for folks to connect with their energetic centers and become aware of their own embodiment. Just like dance, yoga, or any other kind of physical activity, the act of applying oil to your body allows you to become more in touch with the third-dimensional plane. Folks who intentionally set aside time during the day to ground themselves in their bodies may also find themselves receiving more from the plant medicines already in their regime. The ritual oils are just one way that my customers are able to deepen their connection with the generous medicine that plants have to offer! I encourage all my customers to sit with their CBF medicines, learn about the Black & Indigenous land keepers who protect the land they currently reside on, and to ask for consent from the plants they work with. These principles of mutual respect for the plants we live side by side with derive from Black & Indigenous ways of living (the original sustainable human beings), and by tapping into the frequency of gratitude, I believe it opens the door for folks to become more autonomous on all levels of their health and wellbeing.
SHEER: Your mission to increase the representation of POC in plant medicine academia is truly inspiring. How did you discover this passion of yours and how would you describe the importance of decolonizing traditional medicinal practices for healing in our community?
SHEL: Thank you very much, I am still learning so much about how I can be a more responsible and intentional plant medicine user. My enslaved ancestors certainly cultivated a relationship with plants here on Turtle Island based off their relationship to the land on the African continent, but the practices from my lineage are not very present in my immediate family life. The same goes for my Chinese ancestors; traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) is revered around the world for its intricacies and healing abilities, but was not passed down to me in any formal way. My relationship to plants growing up was very intuitive, not really something my parents or other family members introduced to me. I remember gardening with my Mom, and drinking fresh lemonade from my grandmother’s lemon tree, but practices like thanking our plants or utilizing “folk medicines” were not present in my upbringing. I wanted to receive more formal herbalism training in 2019, and so I signed up for the 9-month program through La Mala Yerba (known as Seed, Root and Bloom at the time). This distance learning program really gave me the tools to discuss the ways that plant medicine exists in a colonized context. How many herbalist programs are white-centered? Do these programs emphasize the importance of asking for consent and giving thanks when working with plants? Are they talking about how certain sacred plants have been weaponized or criminalized (cannabis and opium from poppies, for example), and how this disproportionately affects Black folks? Learning about plant medicine necessitates learning about colonial history, its violence and how these systems impact the way we treat the Earth today. So my own personal desire to learn about my lineage through their use of plant medicine was also deeply tied to my frustration with how there aren’t many spaces for PoCs to receive adequate education of and explore their relationships to this sacred practice.
Most universities in the States champion the biomedical model over “alternative” forms of healing that haven’t been “proven” to be effective by the FDA. And of course, the standards and expectations of medicine are so heavily influenced by the belief that the body is some kind of separate entity that can be “fixed” by drugs, and not brought back into holistic balance by the individual with the help of healers in the community. So when you talk about academia’s relationship to plant medicine, it’s not only minimized because of biomedical principles that reject the holistic perspective that healers of Color abide by, but it’s also racialized and seen as just “folk medicine.” Plant medicine isn’t seen as legitimate because of all these factors, and when I realized that it would never be discussed in my public health courses to the degree it deserved, I started to understand why decolonization is necessary in academia.
And it’s necessary on every level! Institutionally and personally. We can begin unlearning colonial ways of seeing the world by challenging binaries, by learning about how all things are connected and depend upon each other, by honoring all living things for their inherent worth and choosing not to exploit them for profit.
“Plant medicine is an excellent way for people, and specifically folks of Color, to have more autonomy in how they heal themselves. They get to decide which plants make them feel good, which ones they connect with, and in the process can even learn about their ancestor’s relationships to the plants they’re using. My research really illuminated the fact that most people just want to feel like they can personally affect change on their lives.”
SHEER: What does self-care mean to you and how do you put this into practice?
SHEL: Right now, my self-care is based in honesty: being honest with myself about what I’m avoiding, where I’m pretending or rejecting reality, what I have yet to process, where I’m giving my energy, how I’m treating myself, and where I want to heal, as well as the steps I need to take to do so effectively. Because it’s based in honesty, that also means I need a great deal of self-compassion if I want the bluntness to mean anything. I believe that honesty without at least a little bit of consideration or gentleness can be very difficult to process. And if life is giving me nothing but straight truth, I at least want to be the one to soften the blow with systems of self-compassion. That looks like not forcing myself to process something if I’m not ready, but also acknowledging that I will need to in the future. It’s a balance of being both the ‘father’ and the ‘mother’ to myself. Knowing that I have work to do, but balancing the work with love and presence and joy. And it’s not just internal, abstract self-care either. A lot of it is physical, like me enjoying a dessert or making myself a nice breakfast, or engaging in my body in ways that feel good, or just chilling out for a smoke break. I know that I am self-sufficient in a lot of ways and so self-care for me is honoring where I can do things for myself, as well as acknowledging where I can’t. Therapy, talking to friends (house plants and trees included), and asking for advice/support all fall under the umbrella of self-care.
I will be with myself as long as I live. I want to continue to be my best friend, show up for myself in as many ways as possible, and be accepting of who I’ve been and will grow into.
SHEER: How are you staying grounded and at peace during these times of uncertainty and isolation?
SHEL: I retreat to green spaces as often as I can! They closed down all the parks in my city but they can’t prohibit access to traffic circles or patches of grass in the street. I visit these spaces, bring a pashmina to sit on and some dried mango slices and just lay out for a couple hours at a time. Being with nature is crucial for me. I also map out my days to ensure I still feel a sense of purpose and work ethic - I have a shop to maintain! Having a responsibility to my customers has always kept me grounded, and right now I want to be of service to people in whatever ways I can. It’s important to nourish your networks during this time. Continue reaching out to others, asking for help and being helpful in return.
“And if life is giving me nothing but straight truth, I at least want to be the one to soften the blow with systems of self-compassion. That looks like not forcing myself to process something if I’m not ready, but also acknowledging that I will need to in the future.
I will be with myself as long as I live. I want to continue to be my best friend, show up for myself in as many ways as possible, and be accepting of who I’ve been and will grow into.”
SHEER: What advice would you give women of color writers and creators as they find their voice and unique path through their work?
SHEL: For me, the purpose of expression is to heal and learn about myself. I am always discovering new parts of myself that want to be explored, healed and expressed. And I would say that the violence against Women of Color is largely psychological. We’ve been made to believe that we are not powerful, multi-faceted and fully capable of being our own light warriors. We’ve been discouraged from trusting our intuition, and our relationships to our wombs have been distorted or severed completely because of sexist, racist institutional violence. I would say many of us feel fragmented and insecure, and it is not our fault. But what we can do is learn to take note of everything and everyone that comprises us: who lives in our bodies, minds, Hearts and spirits? Who is there without our consent? Who inspires us to learn more about ourselves? Who do we aspire to be, and where have we been discouraged from growing into those women?
Women of color must find healthy ways to express themselves or they run the risk of never truly understanding themselves. Please continue to take up space, to go inward and ask the tough questions, to try out new modes of expressing and sharing yourself with others. And most importantly, make sure your cup is always full. You must pour into yourself first, wholly, and intentionally. You are so deserving of this abundance. And what you have to offer is meaningful, simply because it is.
